Solutions that don’t break the bank, reinvent the wheel or marginalize our teachers are within our grasp. We could have rigorous classes, safe and disciplined schools and treat teachers like valued colleagues rather than easily replaceable cogs, and we could do so tomorrow if we wanted. Disclaimer, this is an opinion and commentary site and should not be confused as a news site. Also know that quite often people may disagree with the opinions posted.

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Saturday, March 15, 2014

My personal VAM story

Two years ago when Florida first started including VAM data
my overall evaluation was on the low side of effective. I was at a new school
and quite frankly they didn’t know what to do with me. I co-taught, was the
librarian and then around Thanksgiving more than half way through the second
nine weeks I was given a class of kids with behavior problems with a mandate to
straighten them out (I teach at a school for profoundly disabled children and
adults, I say adults because students at my school can stay under they are
22).

I was a little disappointed but I didn’t think much of it.
My second year evaluation flip-flopped and suddenly I was on the high end of
effective. What was the difference? My kids that’s what and I am not talking
bout the kids I was teaching.

I didn’t know it at the time but much of my VAM data the
first year came from kids at a school I no longer taught at. That’s right, even
though I had been at my new school from the first day of pre-planning; students
at my old school were still being credited to me.

When I found out about this I wrote my district and this was
our exchange.

My 11-12 student list is incorrect it has me teaching kids
who had no growth at a school I know longer worked at.

Sincerely,

Chris,

Unfortunately,
FLDOE only allows the schools to make correction to FTE survey data for short
correction windows, immediately following the survey period. So for 1112
and 1213, the schools can no longer correct the data.

For
1314 corrections I believe that the corrections can be made for a while longer.
Your CRT operator should know. So it is important to ensure that the
students list under my accountability in myproile are correct.

Sorry
I can’t do more to help with the issue.

The guy got back to me very quickly and was very nice but
um, isn’t this 2014? Couldn’t they just hit alt F2 or something and fixed it
up? Apparently not. Like I said at the beginning, I was at the low end of
effective so it doesn’t really matter, but what about for teachers who similar
errors would have made a difference?

The things that VAM is supposed to do make money decisions
and employment decisions are to important to be left to as Diane Ravitch called
it, Junk Science.